In 2025, Max Verstappen has a chance to match Michael Schumacher’s epic feat of winning five consecutive world championships — something that even Lewis Hamilton and the late great Juan Manuel Fangio were unable to do. However, the pre-season hype around the Dutchman’s team, Red Bull, is giving a mixed feeling about how good his chances are.
All of these toned-down expectations are due to the Austrian outfit’s struggles with the RB20’s aggressive concept last season, which induced severe handling issues as the season progressed. The car was quite volatile in riding the kerbs and bumps on the track, which naturally frustrated Verstappen and curtailed his results.
The RB21 will be the biggest factor for Red Bull F1 2025 success, not Liam Lawson, says Max Verstappen.https://t.co/Kb5qEbu3WU pic.twitter.com/KeYlmw0h5P
— PlanetF1 (@Planet_F1) January 6, 2025
There is a notion that Red Bull may be unable to fully iron out these issues with the 2025 car — the RB21 — which will be an evolution of the RB20 concept itself. RacingNews365 has reported that the Milton Keynes outfit is only going to focus on making major changes to the floor and the underside of the wings.
Meanwhile, the changes to the RB21’s sidepod and engine cover will have “subtle adjustments” that would almost be “invisible” to the eye, said Nick Golding in RacingNews365’s YouTube video. Golding also highlighted Red Bull’s technical director Pierre Wache’s perspective on this conscious choice for the team’s 2025 car development.
Wache feels that rival teams have caught up with their design concepts in various areas like the sidepod, the wing concepts, and the pull-rod front suspension that they introduced since the advent of the ground effect regulations in 2022.
“It’s more about how you develop the car under the skin. We are here to do our job and develop the car as well as possible,” Wache said.
On top of that, Red Bull also understands that it is logical for them to focus on the 2026 car concept, which will be completely different. So, if they cannot completely resolve their fundamental issues, they should focus on the long-term gain.
Will Red Bull end the ground-effect era on a good note?
The roots of Red Bull’s 2024 struggles were tracked back to the middle of the 2023 season at the Spanish GP. Team principal Christian Horner revealed this finding about an upgrade which was a misstep in their car development trajectory in Barcelona in 2023.
As Verstappen was on a dominant streak of race wins, the Austrian outfit did not notice this mistake, which eventually turned out to be the stimulus of their handling issues in 2024. Horner admitted that Red Bull was too far down the road of the RB20’s development to undo the damage with the budget cap constraints in place as well.
So, that is the reason rival teams like Ferrari and McLaren were able to make gains at such a rapid rate through the 2024 season as Red Bull hit a ceiling in their development trajectory.
While they managed to claw back some performances and give Verstappen a stable car for the final few races of the year, Ferrari and McLaren had overtaken them on performance as well as points with the Woking team taking the Constructors’ title.
Heading into 2025, Red Bull would be keen to regain the Constructors’ crown with a better car, free from their gremlins. The team’s advisor Helmut Marko has claimed that they have resolved the kerb-riding issue, which could be a big boost for Verstappen’s drivers’ title hopes too.
